VSP 1

Sejun was quite satisfied with his life these days.

Even though Cha Dogyeong landed the finishing blow, anyway, they stopped the runaway of the giant dungeon that had thrown the world into chaos, and even though the commander was Cha Dogyeong, Sejun also played a part in the battle against the Hunter Association President, who turned out to be the mastermind.

Thanks to that, now in a peaceful world, he was living a happy life befitting an S-rank hunter.

Who am I? S-rank hunter, Seo Sejun!

One of only eight S-rank hunters in Korea, and the only one among them without a guild. That was him.

In the early days of his hunter life, he had been in a guild, but he fought with that damned Cha Dogyeong, picked fights with him, and after one thing led to another, he was kicked out of the guild and became independent.

But Seo Sejun did not care.

Talented people always walked alone.

As an S-rank hunter, his ability was strong, he made plenty of money selling expensive dungeon byproducts, and every time he looked in the mirror, his handsome face and incredible body greeted him with a ‘hello?’, making him a sinful man.

Dungeons still existed, but since the major problems were gone, the world was peaceful, and he could just live while enjoying himself now.

Of course, it annoyed him a little that all the spotlight of this world went not to him, but to Cha Dogyeong.

Cha Dogyeong.

Sejun’s rival, the unlucky bastard who had now become the only EX-rank hunter in the world.

From the start of Sejun’s hunter life, they had constantly clashed, and by now had become enemies.

No one knew how lucky that guy was born, but even when he had just awakened, he was flying around with overwhelming strength, then he kept growing and growing until he finally reached the peak of the S-rank hunters, and in the battle that was no different from a final showdown with the Hunter Association President, he turned into a monster who had grown into an EX-rank hunter.

He could only be called disgustingly lucky.

But even while saying that, in truth Sejun also knew. Cha Dogyeong’s strength was not only luck. He just did not want to admit it.

In other words, Cha Dogyeong was someone even Seo Sejun could not deny. Anyway, a monster.

At any rate, all the problems were solved and the world was peaceful, so for a while he would not have to see that unlucky face.

Sejun decided to acknowledge Cha Dogyeong with a generous heart. He was not going to see him anyway.

Now he only had to enjoy life. Seo Sejun, 26 years old, still young, and the world had too many things to enjoy.

Those days when Cha Dogyeong, full of arrogance, called him endlessly to clear dungeons together under the excuse of duty as S-rank hunters, were over.

Now the world was peaceful, and Sejun really only had to enjoy himself.

Or so he thought.

One day while living his peaceful daily life, strange words suddenly started appearing on his system window.

[Loading……]

“What the, why is it doing this?”

His system window, which normally summarized his current status and displayed skill cooldowns or available uses, suddenly started a long loading. Like a lag in a game.

If it were an old CRT TV, he would have smacked it, but the system window was a hologram screen only visible to the hunter, so he could not.

“Status window.”

[Seo Sejun (S-rank Hunter)

Ability: Summoner

Alias: Pet Hunter

Stats

Health: 95/95

Mana: 120/120

Attack: 80

Defense: 60

Agility: 70

Intelligence: 100

Luck: 30

Skills

Summoning, Spirit Summon, Summon Contract, Combat Tactics, Quick Evasion

Passive

Summoning Dependence]

The status window opened normally. Only the system window was frozen, showing a loading message he had never seen before.

The system window, which always served as his only friend with its characteristic cold voice, did not answer no matter how many times he called it.

…Well, it will probably return to normal soon?

With his usual optimistic mindset, Sejun brushed off the strange phenomenon. He was the type not to waste effort on things he did not understand, and he did not have friends to ask about such matters anyway. And nothing happened in reality.

At least for a few days.

The incident happened a few days after the system malfunction, one afternoon when Sejun was lying comfortably in the hammock at home, spending a lazy day.

[Loading complete]

[Connection with the Author is complete.]

Huh?

Sejun, lying down with his favorite sodas stacked up and reading comics, opened his eyes wide at the sudden notification from the system window.

Did the loading finish? But Author…? What is this about?

The strange choice of words made him sit up from the hammock, and then he started to hear a woman’s voice in his ear that he had never heard before.

“Ha, I really wanted to tie Dogyeong and Sejun together.”

What?

He swore it was a voice he was hearing for the first time. Seo Sejun, despite his good looks, strangely had no ties with women, so the only female voices he knew were a few female hunters, with zero romance, or his mother’s voice.

But what was that just now? Dogyeong and Sejun?

That sounded exactly like me and Cha Dogyeong…?

Another female voice reached Sejun’s ear as he was thinking that.

「I never planned to write a Hunter novel in the first place… Not something like ‘The Genius Hunter Smashes the Gate,’ I was going to write ‘How the Villain Eats the Protagonist,’ and what the hell is this mess?」

The woman grumbling must have been the author. A Hunter novel author at that.

‘The Genius Hunter Smashes the Gate’? That sounded exactly like a title where the protagonist would be Seo Sejun.

「In ‘Villain Eats the Protagonist,’ Sejun was the main character. Tsk. Writing from the bottom’s point of view is always easier.」

…What?

「When it became a Hunter novel, the protagonist had no choice but to change to Dogyeong.」

What is she talking about?

「I meant to write a BL novel, but I ended up writing a Hunter novel.」

Excuse me?

The woman’s lament kept going. From what he pieced together, the novel she wrote was a modern fantasy long series called ‘The Genius Hunter Smashes the Gate,’ and its protagonist was Cha Dogyeong.

Seo Sejun was the villain character in it. But he gained so much unexpected popularity that his status rose to that of a supporting lead.

The reason his popularity rose was because his character had appeal, yes, but not the kind of appeal Sejun imagined.

In ‘The Genius Hunter Smashes the Gate,’ Seo Sejun was the combat power measuring stick, the human scouter.

Why was Seo Sejun, an S-rank hunter, a measuring stick? Because the enemies that appeared were so strong that no one but the protagonist Cha Dogyeong could fight them.

Every time, he used what he thought were powerful skills, shouted something like “Did I finish it?”, then got beaten down and retired. He created the trigger for the protagonist to step in, the author-certified human scouter.

A legendary gag character and the mood maker of ‘The Genius Hunter Smashes the Gate.’

That was S-rank hunter Seo Sejun.

He was a supporting character with a main-party role who never left the protagonist’s team. Readers even left comments like ‘Please don’t kill Seo Sejun ㅠㅠ’ and ‘If Sejun dies I’m not reading this anymore.’ He was one of the most popular characters after Cha Dogyeong.

Was it because he was cool? No, it was because he was funny.

「There’s no way I would kill Sejun. He was my original protagonist!」

The woman even lamented like that. Meaning, in the BL novel she originally planned, Seo Sejun was the protagonist.

More precisely, the bottom protagonist.

“This… what the hell is all this talk?!”

For Seo Sejun, who always lived drunk on his own charm, it was a world shattering revelation.

And to hear that he was not the protagonist but just a supporting villain who survived because he was funny, for Seo Sejun, who thought of himself as the main character of the world, it was an impossible truth.

Of course, everything the woman said did match the path Seo Sejun had walked. Every time he shouted “Did I finish it?”, he got beaten and fainted, and when he opened his eyes, Cha Dogyeong had already resolved the situation.

But!

“Does this make sense? I am a character in a novel?”

[Yes, that is correct.]

The system window, silent until now, finally responded to Sejun’s words. Each hunter’s system window had a slightly different personality, but Sejun’s system window carried the image of a cold, aloof man.

His throat went dry. Sejun gulped down the soda he had poured full in a glass. Even so, the charred dryness inside him did not cool. He got angry at the system for no reason.

“Hey, where the hell were you until now!?”

[I only stepped away for a moment, mixed with the external logs. I am always at Sejun-nim’s side.]

While Sejun bickered with the system window, the woman’s laments continued.

「In the end, I couldn’t even make them kiss before the finale.」

「The PD bastard… it’s too much of a regret…」

So the conclusion was this. Originally, the protagonist was Seo Sejun, and the genre was BL. But somehow the genre changed to Hunter fiction, and since Seo Sejun did not fit as a protagonist, the one who had originally been the top, Cha Dogyeong, became the protagonist, while Seo Sejun became a gag villain character.

And after the story ended, the author regretted deeply that she could not write the story of Cha Dogyeong and Seo Sejun that she had originally wanted.